Dem
49
GOP
51
One old standby ad that Republicans ran for years and years attacked Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for her "San Francisco values"—a not-very-well-hidden swipe at her pro-LGBTQ views. Having a foil they could run against who unified nearly all Republicans was a godsend. Dozens and dozens of ads were made attacking her and attacking Democrats for supporting her. It was golden.
But now that Pelosi is just an "ordinary" backbencher (even if still a respected party elder), ads attacking her are falling flat. Too many voters don't realize that they are supposed to know she is the devil incarnate so any association with her is toxic. Those ads just don't work anymore, so the Republicans have stopped running them. They are now focusing directly on her former constituent, Kamala Harris.
Pelosi is still in the House, of course, at least when she is not out on the campaign trail raising money for the Democrats. On Tuesday, she was in court when the man who brutally attacked her husband was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of ever getting out on parole.
Republicans don't have another bogeyman or bogeywoman to replace her with. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) represents eastern Brooklyn, not an area many voters associate with gay people. Also, Jeffries is kind of low key, not in the news as much as Pelosi was, and is not well known. He is not as good a foil as Pelosi was. One survey showed that 40% of the voters had never even heard of Jeffries, whereas Pelosi was very widely known.
So the Republicans are still searching for a foil. One possibility is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). She is even more left-wing than Pelosi, but she has a number of drawbacks as a foil. She is not as well known, she has relatively little power, and attacking an extremely well-spoken young woman is probably not going to work well at all. It might even be counterproductive, by alienating Latino voters. So the search goes on. (V)